What even makes dialogue interesting in RPGs? What works, and what doesn't?

Co-Producers

This episode of Spam Spam Spam Humbug is brought to you by our Patreon backers; thank you to everyone who supports Spam Spam Spam Humbug and the Ultima Codex by that means. And, as always, a hearty thank you to our Patreon co-producers: Seth, Johnny, Dominik, Chris, Violation, Adam, Erik, Thorwan, Pascal, Neil, and Helgraf.

Shout-Outs

Deathblade Dragon and, especially, LadyGray, who on the very evening we recorded this welcomed their third child into the world.

Podcast Topic(s)

In this episode, we talked for a bit about what makes up interesting dialog elements for quests — about what works and what doesn't. This question actually went out on Anchor last week, though the resulting discussion wasn't that long. Still, it gave us a bit of fodder for discussion...though we quickly realized that we've milked the topic of dialogue for about all it's worth for now. That said, we did come to some consensus on what doesn't work as far as dialogue is concerned: don't inundate the player with words, whether spoken or to be read.

In Other News

Yooka-Laylee is Going Old School with a Boxed Version Release - “Playtonic Games’ recently posted on their site that Yooka-Laylee would be getting a physical release to coincide with the worldwide launch in the first quarter of 2017. It’s rare that a Kickstarter success sees a boxed release outside of pricey backer rewards but with all the attention and adoration the title has been getting, this news comes as no surprise.”

Skyrim: Special Edition - The PC minimum & recommended specifications for the updated version of Skyrim that will drop later this month have been released. They're nothing earth-shattering; if you set up your gaming PC in the last four or so years, you should be fine. But it's worth noting that whereas the original system specs for Skyrim stipulated a minimum of 2 GB of RAM (and recommended 4 GB), the Special Edition requires a minimum of 8 GB (though it also recommends that amount). In like manner, whereas the original recommended requirements specified a GTX 260 or similar video card, the new recommended requirements specify a GTX 780 or similar. So clearly, there has been a fairly significant bump in the game's graphics and textures...they require a significant amount of additional resources over and above what the original game needed.

Wasteland 3 - inXile Entertainment's follow-up to their successful resurrection of the Wasteland franchise met its base funding goal on Fig in just three days. (Fig, in case you don't recall, is the new games-centric crowdfunding platform that inXile helped co-found.) Also, the game will support co-op multiplayer; you can be joined by a friend and play through the game together. But equally, if your friend drops out, you can't bring someone else in as a ringer; each of you will pursue the game in single-player mode thereafter.

There are now 10,000 games on Steam - “In an announcement for Steam Dev Days, which is about start in Seattle, Valve revealed there is now 10,000 games on Steam for Windows, Linux, Mac and multiple VR platforms...there are..around 600 VR “experiences” now on Steam...With so many games to choose from, it can be hard to weed out the sheer volume of garbage that’s on Steam which is a real problem for Valve and consumers. Perhaps the upcoming changes to the Steam Store will help.”